1364.66 
DUNN 
C  .3 


•  ♦ 

•  9 

•  0 


»  *  I 

•  ••  •  « 


•  #  4  » 
*  ♦ 

»  •  *  • 

•  •  •  *  • 


*jDRESS  OF  GOVERNOR  EDWARD  F.  DUNNE  OF 
ILLINOIS  AT  THE  GOVERNORS’  CONFERENCE 
BOSTON,  MASS.,  AUGUST,  1915. 


•  «> 


•  • 


The  Abolition  of  Capital  Punishment. 


In  1901,  there  was  convicted  of  murder,  in  the  city  of  Chicago, 

one  Svnon  ;  he  was  condemned  to  die. 

His  case  was  appealed  to  the  Supreme  Court  which  reversed 
the  lower  court,  because  of  objectionable  remarks  by  the  trial 
judge  while  the  accused  was  on  the  witness  stand. 

Synon’s  second  trial  was  held  in  the  court  over  which  I  had,  at 
that  time,  the  honor  to  preside.  He  was  acquitted  after  many 
reputable  men  had  testified  that  he  was  four  miles  from  the  scene  ot 

the  crime  when  it  was  committed.  .  ..  .  .  ,  , 

This  man  was  saved  by  a  few  harsh  and  prejudicial  words  ot 
the  judge  before  whom  he  was  first  tried  ;  and  thus  the  errors,  upon 
which  he’ was  able  to  appeal,  became  the  means  through  which  it 
was  possible  for  him  to  establish  his  innocence.  Only  those  words, 
which  the  court  had  committed  an  error  in  uttering,  stood  between 
him  and  the  death  penalty,  between  justice  and  the  cruel  tiagedy  ot 

which  my  State  would  have  been  guilty.  _ 

-  Onlv  a  year  or  two  ago,  Ray  Pfanschmidt,  a  young  man  living 
near  Quincy,  in  my  State,  was  accused  of  murdering  his  father 
mother,  and  sweetheart,  and  of  burning  the  house  over  their  dead 
bodies.  He  was  convicted  of  the  murder  of  his  father  and  sentenced 
to  the  gallows.  Fortunately,  he  was  able  to  appeal  to  the  Supreme 
Court  where  a  new  trial  was  granted.  A  change  of  venue  was  taken 

and,  in  another  county,  he  was  acquitted.  . 

A  few  days  ago,  one  of  our  most  honored  judges,  a  man  who 
has  served  our  judiciary  with  splendid  efficiency,  resigned  and 
retired,  I  am  told,  a  disappointed  and  broken  hearted  man.  bor 
nearly  twenty  years  he  has  carried  a  growing  burden  of  suspicion 
that  two  men  he  had  sentenced  to  State  prison  for  life  were  inno¬ 
cent.  Twenty-two  of  the  judges  of  Cook  County,  including  this 
judge,  have  stated  to  me,  in  wrung  and  by  word  of  mouth,  then 
opinion  that  these  two  men  were  not  guilty  I  he  records  of  the 
case,  viewed  in  the  dispassionate  light  of  to-day,  reveal  striking  y 
flimsy  evidence  on  which  to  convict  of  murder. 

Our  Legislature  this  year  enacted  a  law  making  it  possible 
to  parole  life  men  after  they  have  served  twenty  years;  and  the 
first  act  under  this  new  law  was  the  release  of  these  two  men. 

What  a  tragedy !  What  a  stain  upon  Illinois’  name  would  have 
been  the  execution  of  these  two  men* if  they  had  been  sentenced  to 
death.  Even  the  ages  could  not  have  removed  it. 


ILLINOIS  STATE  LIBRARY 


129  00654  324  3 


2 

-  i  :  ;  ;;  * 

f  jft •wa^.suchlc^gsf.afe!  these: that  have  set  me  to  thinking  and' 
investigating  and  my  conscience,  reinforced  by  the  results  of  my 
inquiries*  jlSis/m^de  t&e  g  firm  believer  that  capital  punishments 
wrong  in  rfretrry'gilij; 

Before  our  last  General  Assembly  I  urged  repeatedly  the  repeal 
of  our  capital  punishment  code,  recommending  it  in  my  messag  ^ 
and  pleading  for  it  in  person  before  both  houses  of  the  Legislatui^ 

The  repeal  bills  failed,  but  I  am  quite  sure  the  agitation  they 
stirred  up  has  had  a  marked  and  beneficial  effect  upon  the  State’s 
conscience  and  has  aroused  and  formulated  a  new  public  opinion. 
The  press  and  the  leaders  among  men  and  women  engaged  in  the 
great  humanitarian  enterprises  of  our  State  rallied  to  the  measure 
with  a  wonderfully  inspiring  spirit. 

The  principal  argument  advanced,  in  support  of  capital  punish¬ 
ment,  is  that  it  acts  as  a  deterrent.  If  I  could  convince  myself 
that  this  were  true,  my  views  might  be  different.  If  society  needed 
this  awful  penalty  to  protect  itself,  on  the  theory  of  self-defense, 
there  might  be  some  force  and  logic  in  the  argument  of  those  who 
favor  its  retention,  because  society  collectively  has  the  same  right 
that  a  man  individually  has  to  protect  its  life. 

I  doubt  if  it  ever  did  deter.  I  am  certain  that  it  does  not  now 
deter.  On  the  contrary,  all  the  evidences  of  history  and  of  statistics 
are  that  it  never  did  deter.  We  find  on  consulting  our  history  that, 
in  the  days  when  the  penalties  for  crime  were  the  most  severe, 
crimes  themselves  were  the  most  numerous. 

In  England,  in  1699,  there  was  an  agitation  for  penal  reforms. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Pope  Clement  XI  estab¬ 
lished  a  juvenile  prison.  Over  its  doors  appeared  these  words: 
“Clement,  XI,  Supreme  Pontiff,  reared  this  prison  for  the  reforma¬ 
tion  and  education  of  criminal  youths  and  to  the  end  that  those  who, 
when  idle,  had  been  injurious  to  the  State,  might,  when  better 
instructed  and  trained,  become  useful  to  society.”  Inside  the  prison, 
printed  on  a  slab,  were  these  words :  “It  is  little  use  to  restrain 
criminals  by  punishment  unless  you  reform  them  by  education.” 

Reforms  lagged  until  1728,  when  they  were  again  urged  with 
force.  Chancellor  Blackstone,  in  1765,  published  his  commentaries 
and  laid  before  the  English  people  the  utter  folly  of  awful  and 
extreme  penalties.  Penal  reform  in  our  English  system  may  be  said 
to  have  begun  then. 

But  even  at  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  English 
criminal  code  was  excessively  rigid  and  bloody. 

Parliament,  in  March,  1816,  repealed  the  death  penalty  for  lar¬ 
ceny.  At  that  time,  George  Barnett,  a  boy  of  ten  years,  under  con¬ 
viction  of  larceny,  was  in  Newgate  prison  awaiting  excution. 

Punishment  by  death  at  one  time  in  England  could  legally  be 
inflicted  for  more  than  200  different  offenses.  It  was  a  capital 
offense  to  pick  a  man’s  pocket,  to  steal  five  shillings  from  a  shop, 
to  catch  and  steal  a  fish,  to  cut  down  a  tree,  to  harbor  an  offender 
against  the  excise  laws,  to  steal  a  sheep,  or  an  ox  or  a  horse,  to  com¬ 
mit  larceny  of  almost  any  kind.  Seventy-two  thousand  thieves 
were  hanged,  at  the  averaged  rate  of  2,000  a  year,  during  the  reign 
of  Henry  VIII.  Some  offenses  at  that  time  were  punishable  by 


3 


:>} ^ 

boiling  to  death.  One  morning  during  the  reign  of  George  III, 
before  the  rising  of  the  sun,  in  the  city  of  London,  twenty  persons 
were  executed  for  stealing  from  the  person.  In  the  year  1785, 
ninety-seven  persons  were  executed  in  London  for  stealing  from  a 
shop  to  the  value  of  five  shillings. 

Often  the  prisons  were  full  of  children,  many  under  the  age  of 
ten,  who  had  been  informed  upon  for  theft. 

Neither  the  old  Mosaic  theory  of  retribution  and  revenge— an 
eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth — neither  that,  nor  degrada¬ 
tion,  whipping,  branding,  hanging,  maiming,  chambers  of  torture, 
broken  bodies  on  the  wheel,  bones  fractured  on  the  rack,  arms  and 
legs  suspended  with  heavy  weights  attached,  the  burning  of  the 
flesh  and  the  searing  of  the  skin  with  white  hot  iron,  roasting  the 
human  bodies  on  slow  fires,  burial  alive,  tossing  of  the  culprit  into 
a  den  of  wild  beasts,  pouring  molten  lead  into  the  ears,  placing 
men’s  faces  upward  to  the  flaming  sun,  tying  by  the  seaside,  so  that 
drowning  would  follow  the  rising  tide — all  these  have  been  tried 
and  victims  of  these  indescribable  horrors  have  given  up  their 
lives  by  the  thousands,  and  yet  criminals  did  not  become  extinct, 
and  I  believe  history  will  demonstrate  that  crime  increased  rather 
than  decreased  under  these  frightful  penalties. 

I  am  not  going  to  attempt  to  support  my  arguments  by  elabor¬ 
ate  quotations  from  statistics.  There  are  certain  figures,  however, 
which  are  rather  significant,  if  not  conclusive.  I  refer  to  the  statis¬ 
tics  of  the  Federal  Census  bureau  of  1910,  with  reference  to  thf 
effect  of  the  death  penalty  upon  the  commission  of  murder.  These 
statistics  show  that  in  twenty-one  of  the  states  having  the  highest 
number  of  homicides  per  capita  in  the  population,  there  is  not  a 
single  state  that  has  abolished  capital  punishment.  These  twenty- 
one  are  those  which  have  enforced  the  death  penalty  from  the  time 
of  their  organization.  Following  these  twenty-one  states  come 
three  states,  Illinois,  Maryland  and  Kansas,  all  having  the  same 
number  per  capita  of  homicides.  Of  these  states,  Kansas  has  abol¬ 
ished  the  death  penalty ;  Illinois  and  Maryland  have  retained  it. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  twenty  states  which  these  statistics  show 
to  have  the  lowest  number  of  homicides  per  capita.  Among  these 
twenty ,  are  all  the  states  but  one  (Kansas)  that  have  abolished  capital 
punishment.  The  Federal  statistics,  to  my  mind,  show  that  capital 
punishment  has  failed  to  act  as  a  deterrent,  and  that  in  the  states 
where  it  has  been  abolished,  there  is  a  less  per  capita  of  homicides 
than  in  the  states  where  it  has  been  retained.  Go  into  Wisconsin,  a 
state  which  borders  upon  ours.  We,  in  Illinois,  have  had  capital 
punishment  since  we  were  admitted  to  the  Union,  and,  even  while 
it  was  a  territory,  capital  punishment  was  inflicted  for  murder. 
Wisconsin  abolished  this  penalty  years  ago.  Yet  homicides  per 
capita  are  almost  twice  as  many  in  Illinois  as  in  Wisconsin. 

Up  to  1913,  six  states  had  abolished  capital  punishment,  Wash¬ 
ington  followed  in  that  year.  The  United  States  statistics  of  1910, 
show  that  five  of  these  are  among  the  twenty  with  the  lowest  per 
capita  of  homicides,  each  with  a  percentage  less  than  .08  in  each 
10,000  of  population.  The  other  noncapital  punishment  state — 


V 


4 


Kansas — had  the  same  per  capita  of  homicides  as  Illinois  and  Mary¬ 
land,  both  capital  punishment  states. 

Illinois  was  disgraced  by  651  homicides  in  1910,  after  a  century 
of  enforcement  of  capital  punishment,  while  in  Wisconsin,  where 
it  had  been  abolished,  the  homicides  have  not  been  much  over  fifty 
per  cent,  per  capita,  of  those  committed  in  Illinois. 

If  protection  of  society,  if  reformation  of  the  criminal,  if  segre¬ 
gation  of  an  anti-social  element  of  our  population,  if  either  of  these 
is  the  end  or  all  of  them  are  desired,  then  the  separation  from 
society  of  our  criminals  in  decent,  humane,  wholesome,  and  Chris¬ 
tian  surroundings,  will  accomplish  all  that  we,  as  children  of  one 
Father,  have  a  right  to  accomplish.  He  has  not  delegated  to  us  fur¬ 
ther  power  or  right  over  our  fellows.  The  Holy  Scriptures,  so 
often  quoted  in  support  of  retribution,  commands  the  human  race 
not  to  kill. 

If  it  is  wrong  for  one  man  to  kill  another,  if  it  is  a  crime  for 
three  men  to  kill  one  man,  or  for  a  dozen  men  to  kill  one  man,  if 
it  is  a  crime  for  one  man  to  rape,  is  it  not  equally  criminal  for 
twenty  men  to  kill  one  man  or  to  commit  this  other  unmentionable 
crime?  The  increase  in  number  of  participants  and  their  organized 
embodiment,  do  not  make  it  a  right  or  a  virtue  for  them  to  kill  or 
to  rape. 

Christianity  long  ago  revoked  the  doctrine  of  a  tooth  for  a 
tooth,  and  an  eye  for  an  eye.  Christ  prayed  the  Father,  as  He  saw 
the  thief  hanging  by  His  side;  “Father,  forgive  them,  for  they 
know  not  what  they  do.”  Christ  himself  was  suffering  the  linger¬ 
ing  tortures  of  death  at  the  hands  of  passion  and  fury.  He  did  not 
seek  the  destruction  of  those  who  were  murdering  Him  and  the 
thief  by  His  side,  but  He  prayed  that  they  should  see  and  know 
God’s  truth. 

Verily,  God  himself  has  reserved  to  Himself  the  final  penalty 
for  the  sins  of  His  children. 

Criminals  have  been  divided  into  three  classes ;  first,  the 
instinctive  criminal ;  second,  the  habitual  criminal ;  third,  the  occa¬ 
sional  or  single  offender. 

The  instinctive  criminal  cannot  adjust  himself  to  orderly  and 
regulated  environment.  He  is  anti-social  and  alien  in  all  his 
attributes,  and  is  incapable,  by  reason  of  physical,  mental,  or  moral 
deficiencies,  the  nature  of  which  we  do  not  fully  understand  of 
getting  out  of  a  bad  into  a  good  environment  or  of  improvement 
by  training  or  education.  Such  men  we  have  no  more  right  to  mur¬ 
der  than  we  have  to  kill  off  the  insane,  the  feeble-minded,  the  tuber¬ 
culous,  and  others  whose  presence  among  us  entails  upon  us 
responsibilities  and  financial  burden. 

The  habitual  criminal — the  criminal  by  acquired  habit — has 
developed  out  of  environment  and  the  social  status  in  which  he  finds 
himself.  Many  of  our  crimes  against  both  the  person  and  property 
are  the  results  of  social  mal-adjustments  and  conditions  for  whose 
existence  society  itself  is  solely  to  blame.  Society  has  no  right  to 
the  exercise  of  retribution — to  the  life  of  the  offender — when  it  has 
denied  him  his  natural  and  inalienable  rights  and,  in  fact,  has  com- 


5 


pelled  him  to  exist  and  develop  in  the  midst  of  pinching  poverty, 
degrading  squalor  and  degenerating  contaminations. 

Some  of  the  most  frightful  of  the  crimes  by  juveniles  in  our 
great  cities  may  be  traced  directly  to  an  environment  which  could 
not  be  expected  to  produce  anything  but  the  very  worst. 

Society  itself  becomes  criminal  when  it  seeks,  by  violence  and 
the  blood  of  its  victims,  to-right  a  wrong  committed  against  it  by 
such  product  of  its  own  neglect.  For  this  class  we  cannopconceive 
of  execution  performing  any  function.  The  hanging  of  hundreds  or 
thousands  of  them,  even  the  massacre  of  their  young,  would  not 
decrease  the  crime  that  springs  from  the  slums  and  the  tenements, 
so  long  as  the  slums  remain  under  the  tolerance  of  an  intelligent 
society. 

The  third  class  includes  the  occasional  or  single  offender — the 
normal  individual,  who,  through  stress  of  circumstances  or  force  of 
temptation,  or  the  unreasoning  and  unthinking  pressure  of  passion, 
commits  an  evil  deed.  For  him  reformation  is  probable.  He  may 
be  made  a  useful  citizen,  and  society  benefited  by  sparing  his  life. 

Among  the  first  and  third  classes  there  is  no  serious  premedita¬ 
tion  on  the  outcome  of  their  acts.  The  first  class  commit  crime 
because  they  cannot  help  it.  Frequently  they  make  little  or  no 
effort  to  conceal  their  tracks.  They  exhibit  a  certain  form  of  pre¬ 
caution  which  is  inherent  in  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  and  not 
the  intelligent  mental  systemization  of  concealment  or  alibi.  The 
third  class  commit  crime  during  stress  or  in  passion ;  consequently 
they  are  not  in  a  frame  of  mind  to  apprehend  the  effects  of  their' 
conduct.  The  penalty,  no  matter  how  great  or  how  severe,  would 
deter  neither  of  these  types. 

The  other  class — the  habitual  criminal,  has  probably  tasted 
punishment,  but  notwithstanding  how  much  has  been  inflicted 
upon  him,  he  continues  to  return  to  his  old  ways,  because  society 
affords  him  no  other.  Consequently,  the  penalty  has  not  deterred 
him.  Punishment  will  not  cure  him,  nor  will  it  prevent,  nor  even 
retard  others  of  his  type  from  entering  upon  a  like  career. 

So  we  are  thrown  back  upon  our  only  right  and  duty — that  of 
protecting  ourselves  and  society  by  a  process  of  segregation,  both  of 
those  who  commit  crime  and  of  those  who,  under  our  modern  scien¬ 
tific  light,  we  are  able  to  predict  almost  to  a  certainty  will  commit 
crime. 

Another  evidence  that  execution  is  not  effective  is  afforded  in 
the  records  of  lynchings  and  mob  violence.  Whether  these  have 
occurred  in  the  North  or  in  the  South,  they  have  not  had  any  appre¬ 
ciable  influence  in  reducing  crime  of  the  character  which  aroused 
public  fury.  Lynchings  and  burnings  at  the  stake. are  but  too  com¬ 
mon  to-day. 

What  community  has  profited  by  a  reduction  in  crime  follow¬ 
ing  a  lynching? 

Punishment  for  political  or  religious  belief  has  never  hindered 
its  progress.  Christianity  did  not  cease  its  remarkable  strides 
because  its  early  believers  were  thrown  to  the  lions  or  were  made 
torches  to  illuminate  a  Nero’s  festival ;  nor  has  political  liberty  been 
throttled  by  the  execution  of  reformers.  Fear  of  death  has  not 


6 

halted  the  plans  or  dimmed  the  faith  of  good  men  who  understood 
the  consequences  of  their  course.  Why,  then,  should  it  affect  men 
of  evil  minds  who  know  nothing  but  evil  and  do  it  as  naturally 
as  good  men  do  good? 

My  point  is  simply  this,  that  in  no  age  and  among  no  people 
does  history  record  that  threat  or  danger  of  death  has  stopped 
men  or  women,  bent  on  the  accomplishment  of  some  purpose ; 
whether  it  has  been  good  or  bad,  the  conservation  of  human  happi¬ 
ness  and  life  or  its  wanton  destruction.  They  have  assumed  all 
the  chances  and  when  they  have  failed,  they  have  gone  to  their 
execution  unflinching.  This  has  been  as  true  of  the  murderer  as  of 
the  martyr. 

Phychologists  are  trying  to  unfold  to  us  the  mysteries  of  what 
they  call  the  subconsciousness.  The  operations  of  our  imitative 
and  imaginative  spheres,  we  now  fall  back  upon  to  explain,  in  a 
way,  many  things  which  heretofore  have  baffled  solution.  We  fre¬ 
quently  remark  that  crime  goes  in  waves  and  suicides  by  epi¬ 
demics.  Even  epilepsy  is  said  to  contain  an  element  of  imitation 
and  habit ;  for  in  a  class  of  these  unfortunates,  seizure,  in  one, 
will  often  be  followed  by  seizures  in  many  or  all  of  them.  There  is 
a  contagion  of  noise,  of  restlessness  and  disturbance,  just  as  there 
is  contagion  of  disease.  It  sweeps  from  individual  to  individual 
and  soon  sways  a  mob. 

*  Who  can  say  that  an  exhibition  of  mob  passion  and  violence, 
in  which  property  has  been  destroyed  and  life  has  been  taken,  has 
pot  irreparably  damaged  the  whole  community.  Those  of  us  who 
have  studied  a  mob  have  been  struck  by  its  personal  appeal,  and  we 
have  seen  one  after  another  drawn  into  the  vortex  and  taking  part 
in  the  destruction  without  cause  or  reason.  We  have  seen  the  mob 
spirit  intensified  and  inflamed  beyond  expectation  of  control  by  the 
first  deed  of  murder.  Like  the  animal  who  becomes  ferocious  when 
he  tastes  blood,  so  the  human,  when  aroused,  becomes  an  unre¬ 
strained  brute  at  the  sight  of  blood.  Men  who  watched  the  riots  of 
a  few  years  ago  in  the  Capital  of  our  State  have  told  me  that  not 
until  the  first  life  had  been  sacrificed,  did  the  mob  lose  all  restraint 
and  enter  upon  a  wholesale,  extended  and  unreasoning  debauch 
of  fire  and  murder,  which  could  not  be  stopped,  except  by  great 
show  of  military  power. 

Of  a  similar  type — perhaps  invisible — are  the  effects  of  a  legal 
execution  upon  the  community.  Its  first  and  most  debasing  influ¬ 
ence  is  upon  those  who  witness  it.  The  crowd  about  the  scaffold 
is  more  fearful  to  contemplate  than  the  struggles  of  the  human 
wretch  dangling  to  the  rope.  The  morbid  crowds,  that  stand  with¬ 
out,  compensate  the  absence  of  vision  by  stimulated  mental  pictures 
and  imagining  which  are  equally  degrading.  The  whole  city  for 
weeks  feels  a  depression  that  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  humiliation 
and  remorse. 

Too  much  importance  cannot  be  attached  to  the  argument 
that  the  capital  punishment  law  operates  against  justice.  How 
many  murderers  go  free  because  juries  will  not  inflict  the  death 
penalty,  though  they  have  sworn  to  follow  the  evidence  and  the  law 
and  have  declared  themselves  not  to  be  opposed  to  it. 


While  it  is  true  that  the  accused  is  entitled  to  his  liberty,  if 
there  is  doubt  as  to  his  guilt,  it  is  equally  true  that  many  a  jury 
is  certain  of  his  guilt,  but  lacks  that  degree  of  conviction  which 
will  support  a  decree  of  death. 

•  Thus  the  tendency  is  always  towards  leniency  and  the  number 
of  judgments  of  deaths  falls  to  an  almost  negligible  quantity.  What 
better  evidence  could  we  have  of  the  presence  of  a  widespread  and 
deeply  rooted  conviction  that  the  death  penalty  is  wrong.  Men  say 
they  believe  in  it,  but  they  are  exceedingly  slow  to  apply  it  when 
they  have  the  opportunity.  Conscience — that  still  small  voice^that 
controls  the  human  mainspring — rebels  and  they  refuse  to  go 
counter  to  its  admonitions. 

Here  occurs  another  argument  against  this  penalty.  After  a 
period  of  leniency,  in  a  community,  some  atrocious  deed  is  done  or 
there  is  a  wave  of  crime,  so-called.  The  populace  becomes  excited 
and  demands  the  rigid  enforcement  of  the  law  to  the  very  letter ;  for 
recent  events  it  calls  for  blood.  The  newspapers  and  the  dema¬ 
gog  grow  vociferous  and  mass  meetings  pass  resolutions.  The 
wheels  of  the  law  are  speeded  up  and  the  first  one  or  two  accused 
of  murder  are  sacrificed,  after  which  affairs  assume  their  old  ways. 
Such  instances  are  of  common  knowledge.  They  demonstrate 
very  clearly  that  jurors  trying  men  for  their  liberties  and  lives  are 
not  always  dominated  solely  by  their  own  conscience,  the  testimony 
and  the  law,  but  are  influenced  by  extraneous  forces,  however 
unconscious  they  may  be  of  it  or  careful  they  may  be  to  act  hon¬ 
estly. 

Concluding,  I  want  to  call  your  attention  to  the  attitude  of 
those  great  spirits  and  hearts  of  our  American  leaders  of  humanity. 
Our  literature,  our  science,  our  art,  our  religion  teem  with  right¬ 
eous  protest  against  the  so-called  legal  execution  of  our  fellow  men. 
Those  who  have  led  us  jnto  the  clearer  lights  of  duty  and  responsi¬ 
bility  have,  without  exception,  plead  for  the  abolition  of  this 
hideous  disgrace  and  bloody  inheritance  from  a  brutal  age. 

Lincoln  wrote:  “God  helping  me,  I  will  never  sign  the  death 
warrant  of  any  man  so  long  as  I  live”;  Bryant,  “I  am  heartily  with 
you  in  your  warfare  against  the  barbarous  practice  of  punishment 
by  death” ;  Whittier,  “I  do  not  regard  the  death  penalty  essential 
to  the  security  and  well  being  of  society.  Its  total  abolition  and  the 
greater  certainty  of  conviction  which  would  follow  would  tend  to 
diminish  rather  than  increase  the  crimes  it  is  intended  to  prevent”; 
Longfellow,  “I  am  and  have  been  for  many  years  an  opponent  of 
capital  punishment” ;  Horatio.  Seymour,  “I  am  decidedly  in  favor  of 
the  softening  of  the  criminal  code”;  Dr.  Benjamin  Rush,  “The 
power  over  human  life  is  the  sole  prerogative  of  Him  who  gave  it. 
Human  laws,  therefore,  are  in  rebellion  against  this  prerogative 
when  they  transmit  it  to  human  hands”;  Father  Matthew,  “i.  have 
been  thirty  years  in  the  ministry  and  T  have  never  yet  discovered 
that  the  founder  of  Christianity  has  delegated  to  man  any  right  to 
take  away  the  life  of  his  fellow  man”;  Henry  Ward  Beecher,  “In 
our  age  there  is  no  need  of  a  death  penalty,  and  every  consideration 
of  reason  and  humanity  pleads  for  its  abolition”;  Wendell  Phillips, 

I  he  gallows  should  be  abolished  altogether.” 


1 


/  / 


UNIVERSITY  OF  ILLINOIS-URBANA 


3  0112  122541615 


I  might  continue  to  quote  for  a  day,  but  leave  these  thoughts 
with  you  as  examples  of  the  aspirations  of  the  leaders  of  humanity. 

The  cold-blooded  enforcement  of  this  awful  penalty,  under  the 
forms  of  law,  is  brutal  and  abhorrent  and  wrenches  the  decent  sensi¬ 
bilities  of  every  public  official  who,  by  an  act  or  omission,  is 
required  to  participate  in  it,  including  the  jurymen  who  imposed  the 
penalty,  the  judge  who  directs  its  execution,  the  Governor  who 
refrains  from  clemency,  the  sheriff  who  superintends  the  hanging, 
the  miserable  unknown  human  tool  who  cuts  the  rope.  It  degrades 
and  demoralizes,  depresses  1  Rh  re  r,orse  and  humiliation  the  com 
mumty  in  which  it  takes  place.  It  lowers  the  level  of  the  fine 
instincts  and  is  fraught  Avith  the  ever  present  danger  that  a  life  is 
being  sacrificed  to  the  fallibilities  of  the  human  mind  and 
conscience. 

As  the  executive  of  a  great  commonwealth,  I  come  before  you 
to-day,  the  governors  of  sister  states,  to  plead  with  you  to  give  this 
subject  your  honest  thought  and  faithful  consideration. 

The  tendency  of  modern  government  in  highly  civilized  com¬ 
munities  is  slowly  and  surely  toward  the  abolition  of  capital  pun¬ 
ishment.  Italy,  Holland,  Switzerland,  Belgium,  Portugal  and 
Roumania  have  abolished  it.  In  the  United  States  it  has  been 
abolished  in  Kansas,  Maine,  Michigan,  Minnesota,  Oregon,  Rhode 
Island,  South  Dakota,  Washington  and  Wisconsin. 

Ought  Ave  have  still  upon  our  statute  books  the  penalty  tha 
takes  human  life  under  the  forms  of  Uav  or  keep  pace  with  th 
progress  of  events,  particularly  as  the  records  show  that  it  ha 
ceased,  it  it  ever  did,  to  act  as  L  deterrent  of  grievous  offenses  ’ 


.fcj 


